DukaStock privacy policy and end-user license agreement, thirteen numbered clauses covering data collection, phone number hashing, AI training data, user rights, and service limitations.
Privacy Policy & End-User Agreement
This is the ledger for how DukaStock handles your phone number, your sales messages, and the AI model built on top of them. Same as any ledger, every entry below is numbered and dated.
What this policy covers
This Agreement governs your use of DukaStock, a service that helps small Duka shopkeepers in Rwanda log sales through WhatsApp, USSD, and SMS. By sending a message to the DukaStock WhatsApp number, dialling the DukaStock USSD code, or otherwise using the service, you agree to the terms below.
What information we collect
Your phone number, the content of your sales messages, the sales records you create through the service, and temporary USSD session data such as menu selections and language preference. We do not collect your name, location, national ID, or anything beyond a phone number and the transaction text you choose to send.
How we protect your phone number
Your phone number is hashed the moment it reaches our system, turned into a code nobody, including the person who built DukaStock, can reverse. No plaintext phone number is stored anywhere. This follows Rwanda's Law No. 058/2021 on the protection of personal data and privacy.
How we use your information
To log the sale you described, keep your USSD session working between key presses, and send optional weekly restock summaries by SMS. We do not sell your data. The messages used to train DukaStock's AI model came from a separate group of shopkeepers who gave verbal consent specifically for that research, before those particular messages were ever collected.
How long we keep your information
Sales logs are kept for as long as you use the service. USSD session data is deleted automatically once your session times out. You can ask us to delete your sales history at any time.
Who we share information with
Twilio delivers WhatsApp messages. Africa's Talking delivers USSD and SMS. Both only see a message in transit and have no access to the DukaStock database or your hashed identity.
Your rights
You can ask what data we hold against your hashed identifier, request deletion of your sales history, stop using the service at any time with no penalty, and withdraw consent for your messages to be used in future research if you contributed to the original training data.
Children and vulnerable users
DukaStock is built for adult shopkeepers running a business and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect data from minors.
License to use the service
You're granted a limited right to use DukaStock to log your own retail sales. You agree not to submit false transaction data, not to try to access another shopkeeper's sales history, and not to use the service in a way that breaks Rwandan law.
No guarantee of perfect accuracy
DukaStock's AI model extracts product, quantity, and unit information automatically, and it is not perfectly accurate, especially for products or phrasing outside its training data. When the model isn't confident, the system falls back to a simpler method instead of guessing. Check the confirmation message after each sale.
Service availability
DukaStock is a capstone research project, self-hosted on a single production server. It is not guaranteed to run without interruption and may be modified or discontinued, particularly once the academic capstone period ends.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects how your data is handled, we'll make a reasonable effort to notify active users through the channel they already use: WhatsApp, USSD, or SMS.
Contact
Questions, deletion requests, or concerns about this policy can be sent to o.abizera@alustudent.com.